My Sister's Keeper - by Jodi Picoult

This is the first book I've ready by Jodi Picoult and I couldn't put it down. The story is about a 13 year old girl who was conceived to be a genetic match to her older sister who suffers from a rare form of Leukemia. In her few short years she's already given several donations to her sister, from blood to bone marrow and now she is being asked to give her kidney. She is asking for the right to have a say in this decision.

The book alternates first person POV from Anna who is struggling to obtain her own identity for the first time in her life. To Kate, the sick sister who has fought hard and would like her own chance at a normal life. To Jesse, the brother who has become invisible to the family so wrapped up in his sister's illness. To Sara, the mother so wrapped up in trying to save her daughter she doesn't realize what she is doing to the rest of the family. Brian, the father is a fire-fighter, who has dedicated his life to saving people yet he can't do anything to save his daughter. Campbell, the lawyer that Anna hires, has his own issues. He initially takes the case seeing an opportunity for glory but realizes that he has a much larger opportunity. Julia, who is appointed as the Guardian Ad Litem to help make the decision as to whether or not Anna or her parents should have final say in Anna's choice to help her sister.

The book goes back and forth in time and shares the history of this family as well as the current state of affairs. It is a book about family and how we take them for granted. It is a book about how easy it is to slip through the cracks and become or, at least, feel invisible even amongst those who love you the most. It is a book about the masks we wear and how we try to hide our weaknesses to be strong for those around us. The book addresses some hard choices, from the current situation with stem cell research and the idea of creating a "designer baby" to the choices many of us have to make at some point in our life when it comes to health/medical issues of those we love.

The ending was not at all what I expected, but it really did end the only way that the book could end. Throughout the book you will smile and you will shed tears, sometimes for happy moments and sometimes for those moments in life that are sad not because of what happens but because of the circumstances that can't be avoided.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I intend to. However, from the previews I have seen it is apparent that they do take some license with the book, I just hope they don't take too much.